A Halloween Night
by Lady Rhapsody
Summary: B/V One-Shot: He had been invited to the Halloween party, but there was nothing that could have enticed him to actually attend. He had been at Capsule Corporation just shy of a year, and in that time had learned that holidays were best avoided.


**+ + A Halloween Night + +**

She died on a Halloween night, long before he was ready.

He knew she was dead the very moment the last breath escaped her body, and the shock, the unbelievable cruelty of it, jolted him from his slumber. He lay beside her, one hand in hers and the other over her heart until the last trace of warmth was gone and the dawn began to seep in through their window.

His hands looked ruddy and coarse next to her porcelain face; he had never become numbed to the stark contrast between them. He would never get a chance to. Keen dark eyes took in the sight of her frantically, though he knew that, no matter how prolonged his miserable existence, he would never forget her face. He didn't even want to blink – he wanted to savor every instant until the last traces of her spirit had faded.

He did not cry, though without her he had nothing. He rarely cried – he never would again. But he would honor to her by remembering. He remembered everything.

Slowly, he rose, carefully side-stepping the trappings of the holiday party she had insisted on having, even though they had known the end was near. Bulma Briefs had never failed to celebrate Halloween, and so they had indulged her as everyone always had. But it was more than that – she had had a special attachment to Halloween, and so, he supposed, did he.

Without conscious thought, his feet had carried him downstairs. They took him past the bedrooms of their adult children, past the kitchen which had been the meeting place of the industrious family, past the entrance to the Capsule Corporation offices, through the macabre-decorated ballroom which the house-bots were still busily cleaning. They did not stop until he found himself outside, leaning against the entrance to the backyard gazebo.

Cigarette butts and empty champagne flutes could do nothing to diminish the significance of this place. He had come here to escape her and her friends, and had instead linked himself with them forever.

**. . .**

He had been invited to the Halloween party, but there was nothing that could have enticed him to actually attend. He had been at Capsule Corporation just shy of a year, and in that time had learned that holidays were best avoided.

When the decorations had started to go up, after a grisly horror movie marathon, he found himself intrigued with this paradoxical holiday which seemed simultaneously aimed to entertain children and to terrify adults. He silently watched them as he always did, wondering at the dissonance he was seeing in human culture – they claimed to abhor carnage, and yet here they were, celebrating the trappings of death.

It was disgustingly apparent that these people had never experienced evil as he knew it, or else they could never have embraced the holiday with such joy. He found it tasteless and naive, and yet on the night of the party he found himself sitting on the balcony where he could get a clear view of the party spilling out onto the back patio.

He told himself that he was not waiting to catch a glimpse of _her_, but it was a lie. She was slowly becoming a fixture in his everyday life, and their explosive arguments and heated sideways glances had somehow began to draw him out of the dark places. Nothing had happened, and yet it was already there – an emergent, tenuous link which drew them together.

If it were not for her flickering ki signature, he would not have recognized her as she emerged from the house. There was nowhere on Earth she could hide from him, which may have troubled her but suited him just fine. He watched her cross the lawn for a moment before moving to follow her, purposeful without really knowing why.

She was sitting in the gazebo as if waiting for him, wrapped in a long black cloak. She nodded in acknowledgment of his presence, but did not immediately speak. When she slid the cloak from her shoulders to light a cigarette, he understood why there had been sniveling human attendants flitting around all day. She was dressed in an elaborate masquerade gown, complete with a black domino mask and feathers trembling in her hair. Her lips were the color of freshly spilled blood; the color next to her human pallor was disturbing.

They did not speak until she finished smoking, allowing the muted strains of music from the party to fill the silence. Finally she looked at him, eyes dark behind her mask.

"Halloween is my favorite holiday." Her voice was low; he still wasn't sure if she had been speaking to him or to herself. "You can become whoever you want to be."

The invitation was subtle – a slight parting of red lips, the movement of her bare shoulders, the whisper of silk – but unmistakable, and it took him only a fraction of a second to accept. Anyone who wandered towards them from the party could have seen them, but it didn't matter.

He closed the distance between them and seized her, one hand over her mouth to muffle her sigh as he trailed his lips from her throat downwards. She was wearing elaborate garters but no panties, which brought a wicked smirk to his face; it was the first of many surprises in store for him throughout their tumultuous relationship. She bit down on his hand as he pleasured her; he finished and lifted her onto the railing to enter her, and when she kissed him, his own blood was bitter on his tongue.

When it was over, they said nothing. He set her down off of the railing, and they regarded each other for a long moment, neither party ready to verbally acknowledge the step they had just taken. He took a step back, torn between escape and a second round, but was held fast. She finally smiled – a small, ironic twist of swollen lips that hinted at what was ahead – and brushed past him to rejoin the party.

They would argue the very next day, but they had never be able to put the fire of that first coupling out. Despite the fights, the wrongdoing on both of their parts, what they had started would never be finished.

He would never – could never – forget that blood-red smile, the slope of her shoulder illuminated in the garish orange glow of the party lights, the ivory of her skin through sheer stockings, the twinkling eyes behind the mask. They would spend the rest of their lives together, and each subsequent Halloween his reluctance to participate was tempered with that memory, with the uninhibited atmosphere that allowed hidden feeling to come to light and had changed his life forever.

Their second child had been born on Halloween, the daughter that had proven to be his redemption, his reckoning, his resurrection. She was his gift to Bulma, his single pure contribution to their life together. Seeing her prance around in her ridiculous human costumes each year had touched something in him that even her mother could not reach, that dormant part of him which had been stifled and strangled within an inch of its life.

It had been the completion of the circle, the last piece that needed to be put into place to salvage the ruin of his horrifying life, the life that closely resembled what humans thought they were celebrating on the last day of October. He was an outsider, and despite the skeletons, the fake blood and the allusions to the afterlife, he could see the holiday for what it really was – a celebration of life in the face of death, a figurative middle-finger to the darkness that lingered in the corners of the universe, a reason to shed inhibition and be what you were normally too afraid to be.

She died on a Halloween night, and he knew that was what she would have wanted.

* * *

**+ + Lady Rhapsody + +**


End file.
